


Gold and Platinum and Straw

by wanderingaesthetic



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: F/F, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27707017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingaesthetic/pseuds/wanderingaesthetic
Summary: Kain turned the memory of that golden evening behind Rosa’s house over and over in his mind. Out of that memory grew the worm that would eat his heart.
Relationships: Cecil Harvey/Kain Highwind, Rosa Joanna Farrell & Cecil Harvey & Kain Highwind, Rosa Joanna Farrell/Cecil Harvey, Rosa Joanna Farrell/Kain Highwind
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	Gold and Platinum and Straw

**Author's Note:**

> I've been toying with the idea of writing a novelization of Final Fantasy IV. This is, potentially, a preview of that larger work.

One summer afternoon, Kain went to Rosa's house alone. Her mother directed him to the back of the house, where Rosa was practicing at archery. He watched her, her skin and hair golden in the setting sun, the smooth, skilled motion of her pull at the bow, arms and legs and hips and back working in the draw.

“I’d hate to be a rabbit in your sights,” Kain said as she bullseyed a third straw target in a row.

Rosa laughed as she walked between her targets, gathering her spent arrows. “A rabbit might evade me. Targets are easy, but I’m afraid I take too long to aim.”

“You’re far more skilled than I am. I’m afraid I know only the basics.”

“Would you like to sharpen your skills, sir dragoon?” Rosa asked.

“If only I knew an able teacher,” Kain said, shaking his head with a smile.

Rosa made a little _come here_ gesture with her hand and held out the bow. “Let’s see how you do,” she said.

Kain closed one eye and drew back the bowstring without nocking an arrow. It was a more difficult task than he expected. “You’re stronger than you look,” he said.

“Did you think I was playing at toys?”

“No. But I don’t think even the standard infantry bows have so heavy a draw.”

“They won’t punch through armor, either,” Rosa said.

Kain loosed the string. “What do you have to say for my technique?” he asked.

“Mm,” she said. “Draw again,” she said. “And hold.” Kain stood still with the bow tight in his left hand and the string held in balance on the first two fingers of his right hand

“If you were in earnest we would have to get you another bow. Your arms are too long for mine. You’re drawing outside of it, but—“ she put her hands on his shoulders and adjusted his stance slightly, patted his elbow to move it. Kain stood very, very still as she put his hands on his waist to adjust his footing. “Wait!” she said suddenly, looking him up and down. “You’re left handed! Reverse everything!”

Kain released the string and stared at her for a moment, slack-jawed, before he began to rearrange himself. “How foolish is it that it never occurred to me I was shooting backwards?”

“It takes skill with both hands, so it may not have been a handicap,” Rosa allowed, handing him an arrow. “Still, you may find it easier to aim this way.”

“Lower your elbow a little,” she said as he drew, gathering the fletched end of the arrow between his fingers this time. He loosed, letting the bowstring free from the pads of his fingers. The arrow flew and hit the second ring of the target.

“You’re right,” he said, staring at the target. “I learned the other way, so I’ll need practice to get used to it, but that did feel much better,” he said, turning to her in amazement. “I would have done it backwards my whole life.”

“You’re welcome,” Rosa said with a smile. “Now give me back my bow. If we don’t have one the right size for you this is only going to teach you awful habits.”

“I’ll let you do the hunting,” Kain agreed. “Though, traditionally it is the man bringing home the game. I suppose I could get used to it.”

“I might. Perhaps. _Perhaps_ be persuaded to give you a portion of venison,” Rosa said as she let loosed another arrow. It hit dead center.

“I think I’d like a quail.”

“Then you’d _truly_ be forcing me to work on my aim,” she said as she bent for an arrow.

“I haven’t seen you miss yet.”

“You haven’t seen me shoot at a moving target yet.”

“I have faith in your abilities.”

“And do you know how to dress and cook a quail, Kain Highwind? Or a deer, for that matter?”

“No,” Kain admitted. “I suppose I would have to learn. I’d have a lovely supper waiting for you when you came home from the field.”

Rosa let her bow fall to her side and looked over her shoulder at him, her lips pursed in amusement.

 _I’ve been caught._ He realized too late that, without thinking about it, he’d been painting a picture of what their domestic life together might be like.

Their eyes met. Kain’s heart thudded. Rosa shook her head, her lips in a half smile, and turned back to her target practice.

Kain watched her in silence. He took in with new admiration the strength of her little body, the smooth stretch of her arms from hand to hand as she pulled the bow. The sun shone through her white sundress, revealing the whole of the shape of her legs, and he had never desired anything more than he desired her in that moment.

He leaned against a fence post and cast about for a way to tell her. “The sun makes you all golden,” he said. “It’s funny,” he said, beginning to babble, hoping that she didn’t notice his voice quavering slightly. “When they describe blonde hair. Yours is _golden_ and Cecil’s is _platinum_ , and mine is just… straw.”

She stopped in her shooting and approached to lean on the fence beside him. “Have you ever looked down on the fields in the autumn after they roll all the straw into bales?”

Kain shook his head. “No.”

“Straw can be quite beautiful,” she said, and, biting her lip, reached up to touch the lock of hair that had freed itself from his ponytail to fall in his face. “And it smells nice, when it’s been sitting in the sun.” She dropped her hand, and giggled awkwardly, and scurried to retrieve her arrows.

***

Three weeks later, Cecil reached the most difficult point in his Dark Knight training, the time he would begin to wear the dark armor in full. Twice, Kain came by Rosa’s house for her mother to say that she wasn’t there, that she was at the castle. Kain didn’t find her in the white mage laboratories, or barracks, or anywhere else, until he did find her, on another evening, in the terraced gardens within the castle walls, sitting on a bench beside Cecil, his hands clasped in both of hers, in very intense conversation. They did not see Kain.

The third time, Kain met Rosa as she was leaving her house.

“Ah, Kain, I was just on my way to the castle,” she said as she shut the door behind her.

“May I walk with you?” he asked.

“I… don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Cecil?” Kain breathed.

“Yes,” Rosa said slowly, drawing the s out into a hiss. The abject misery must have shown in Kain’s face because Rosa said. “I can’t. I can’t let him suffer, Kain. If there’s any way I can help, I have to.”

“No. I… I understand,” and Kain, who had faced one day of Dark Knight training and had all but run away screaming, did understand. “Go to him.”

Rosa swept her white mage robe around herself, and left him in the street.

Cecil and Rosa had always been close, and the three of them had all been inseparable as children, but Kain had always assumed that Cecil would make some political marriage. Some Eblan princess or Troian Epopt. That Kain, Lord Captain Highwind of His Majesty’s dragoons, would marry common would make scandal enough, that _Cecil_ would be his rival for Rosa’s love was not something Kain had ever dreamed.

Cecil was his dearest friend. He was noble, and strong, and kind despite all that the dark armor tried to make him other. To call him handsome would be to cheat him. And he was the Crown Prince of Baron in all but title. Of course it would be him. Of course it was. No one else would be worthy of her, not really. Not even Kain himself. And Cecil could make her queen. She _should_ be queen.

And if Kain felt like he was dying as he walked back to the barracks, well, that was really only Kain’s problem.

He swayed between despair and hope, because Rosa and Cecil were close, because Rosa and Cecil and Kain had always been close, perhaps Rosa was giving Cecil a bit of friendly healing, perhaps it was a _white mage thing._ One day, Cecil did not arrive in the training hall to spar with Kain as he always did on Saturday mornings. Kain waited for him thirty minutes before he went up to his quarters to find him, in genuine concern, because Cecil’s Dark Knight training had indeed been going poorly.

It took Cecil long minutes to respond after Kain knocked on his door. Cecil buttoned his shirt as he answered the door. “Ah.. Kain, I’m sorry, slept in,” he said, blearily. “Give me a minute,” he said, and shut the door on him, but not before Kain saw Rosa’s tall, white boots and red-slashed white mage robe on the floor.

Kain imagined all too well the pair of them. He had seen Cecil naked, in the baths that the soldiers and mages used in the basement of the castle, and he had made as careful a study as he could of Rosa’s body without obviously leering at her. Kain leaned heavily against the wall outside Cecil’s rooms, his hand over his mouth, biting the webbing between thumb and forefinger.

In the whole of the blue planet, were there two people more beautiful?

Rosa, Rosa was probably naked in Cecil’s bed, and Cecil… Kain rolled his eyes back into his head and groaned.

Kain had loved Rosa since they had been children. He was quite aware of the fact, comfortable with it, even if he wasn’t sure how to ever consummate it. But Cecil…

There was a secret in Kain’s heart that he occasionally told himself and then immediately tried to forget, as if he were writing himself messages in a journal and then ripping out the pages.

Cecil had been a pretty child, very often mistaken for a girl, until about the age of fifteen, when, through some combination of his knight’s training and puberty hitting him with the force of Titan’s fist, he gained about six inches of height and fifty pounds of muscle. And ever since that time, Kain had trouble pulling his eyes away from him.

At first he told himself it was professional interest, as a fellow fighting man. Cecil had the ideal build for a knight: a heavy bone and muscle structure, powerful and immovable as some dwarven tank. Later, Kain allowed that perhaps it was envy. Kain was, by most outside sources, not an unattractive man, but he had a long, straight nose and heavy brow that made him look severe and older than his age. He was more likely to be called _striking_ than _handsome_ , and certainly not _beautiful_ or _gorgeous_ as he had heard directed at Cecil more than a few times. Sometimes, in an utter parody of life that made Kain roll his eyes, while a woman was whispering it to a friend and fanning herself. Moreover, Kain was a dragoon, and was thus in a constant war with his body to keep his strength up and his mass down, the better to ride the wind. But even if Kain had no need to concern himself with his weight, no amount of training would make him look like _that,_ like something carved out of marble. Like something carved out of marble by a sculptor with a very lascivious interest in the male form.

But it wasn’t professional admiration or envy that made Kain wonder what the flesh of Cecil’s chest would feel like, or embedded the shape of the join of Cecil’s hip and thigh and ass in his memory, or made him want to lick the water droplets from the seam Cecil’s spine made in the muscles of his back.

There was a version of Kain in Kain’s mind, much more calm and reasonable than the actual Kain, who sat across from him in his imagination and took him by the hand and looked him in the eye and said _Kain. Kain Highwind. This is lust._

Sometimes Kain nodded along with that version of himself and said, _Yes, yes, of course you’re right._ But mostly he screamed and clapped his hands over his ears. Because if that were the case, he was no different than the dozens of stupid girls on the streets of Baron, hoping they would be made a princess someday, or the more canny of them hoping to become his mistress.

The very sensible man than existed in Kain Highwind but did not show his face to the outside world, went on: _You’re in love with Rosa, aren’t you?_

_Yes, yes, of course I am. It’s excruciating. If this isn’t love I never want to feel love because I’d die if I felt more than this._

_And you love Cecil?_ The reasonable version of himself would ask.

_Yes, of course I love him. As a friend, as a brother._

_And you desire him?_

_Yes, perhaps I do. Yes._

_Then are you not_ also _in love with_ him _?_

And it was at that point that Kain metaphorically, or once, literally, crossed out where he had written in his journal, “I am attracted to Cecil,” tore out the page, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire.

Despite the tug of war in his mind, his attraction to Cecil usually didn’t trouble Kain, because even beyond Cecil likely needing to make some political marriage of convenience, Kain had no hope whatsoever of Cecil returning his attraction. Cecil _loved_ women in a lurid sort of way that seemed common in his fellow soldiers but that didn’t entirely make sense to Kain. Cecil’s eyes would linger on women as they bathed next to the spring, and he would bring back books full of lewd prints when he traveled. He seemed to thrive on the attention women gave him, and though as far as Kain knew he’d never more than kissed one of them, he flirted relentlessly.

To hear Cecil tell it, he’d been half in love with dozens of women.

For Kain, there had really only ever been Rosa.

They walked together to the training hall in silence, Kain silently seething, Cecil oblivious, until Kain couldn’t stand it.

“What are your _intentions_ with Rosa?” he asked.

“What?” Cecil asked, startled.

“Do you love her?” he asked, pained.

Cecil stared at him “Yes. Yes, I love her,” he laughed. “What, are you her overprotective brother now?”

“Rosa has no brothers, nor father. _Someone_ has to watch out for her.”

“I assure you, she was _quite_ willing.”

Kain tried, and failed, not to imagine. “Are you--would you—What are your intentions?” He repeated. “Do you plan to marry her?”

Cecil was suddenly quiet.

“Do you?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“You _think_?”

“I didn’t exactly… we didn’t exactly _plan_. But yes. _Yes,_ ” he sighed. “There’s no better woman anywhere,” Cecil said, mindlessly grinding Kain’s broken heart to sand. “Yes, if she’ll have me, I’ll marry her.”

“Don’t think I’ll go easy on you,” Kain said when they reached the training hall. “Dark Knight training or no.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Cecil said as he dropped into a ready stance.

It was fortunate that Kain’s rage made his aim worse even as it made his attacks more forceful. Cecil never realized that Kain was genuinely trying to maim him.

Their sparring session that day ended with Kain disarmed, but even with the practice spear gone, he called the wind, and jumped, landing on Cecil’s chest and knocking the air out of his lungs. Cecil brought up his sword between them, but weakly, and Kain fell to his knees to straddle him, pinning his elbows to the floor.

Kain’s teeth were bared and his hands were trembling claws as he tried to decide what he wanted from this _stupid_ , oblivious man whom he loved and hated in equal measure. What he _really_ wanted was to bite and claw at his face and tear out his hair. What he did instead was wrap his hands around his throat.

Cecil’s face reddened as Kain’s grip tightened. Cecil dropped his wooden sword and tapped out, a panicked patter of his hand on the floor. Kain let go and rose to his feet, looking away as Cecil rolled to his knees.

“That was _reckless,”_ Cecil said as he coughed. “If I’d had a live blade I would have killed you.”

“Well. You didn’t,” Kain said. He thought about the look Cecil had in his eyes just before he’d wrapped his hands around his throat. It wasn’t quite fear, but it was, at the very least, _alarm._

 _At least I made him feel something_. Kain thought.

***

Kain turned the memory of that golden evening behind Rosa’s house over and over in his mind. Out of that memory grew the worm that would eat his heart. For a few shining days he had reveled in the memory of her hands on his waist and his back. Her words about his hair made him think she might find him comely, could even desire him. And she had not protested at the idea of the two of them as a bonded pair, of Kain as the person she would come home to.

The memory led him to believe that in some different, better world, she could have desired him. She could have been his. That if not for Cecil, she _would_ be his.

Later, each time Cecil left Baron to lead the flock of Red Wings, Kain entertained the dark fantasy that he would not return. By magefire or sword or airship accident or the dark blade taking too much of his life, there was some small chance that Cecil would die every day. If that happened, why, he and Rosa had loved him best. The nation would mourn him, but they alone could comprehend each other's soul deep loss. She would fall into his arms. Into his bed.

The thought made Kain sick, but he couldn't stop thinking it. Whatever his own sordid desires, Cecil was dearer to him than a brother. Losing him would be to lose a part of his own heart. But he could hardly be blamed were his beloved friend lost, somewhere over mountains or sea. He would say to Rosa that Cecil would want them to care for each other in his absence. It would even be true. He would be sick with grief and self loathing but that wouldn't stop him.

Each time Cecil returned a little later than expected, Kain dreaded and hoped that this was it, that this was the day, that he had gotten his wish.

By the time Golbez got to Kain, he needed only loosen one screw in Kain's mind to make the captain of dragoons his tool. Kain had already wished Cecil dead. Golbez need only make him believe that Cecil deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> The alternate title of this fic is just.... "Jolene"


End file.
